Obama's Brand New Old Iran Policy

Jackson Diehl writes that neither sanctions nor military action is likely to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The answer? Good, old-fashioned containment while we await regime change:

The point would be to limit Iran's ability to produce nuclear weapons or exercise its influence through the region by every means possible short of war -- and to be prepared to sustain the effort over years, maybe decades. It's an option that has been lurking at the back of the debate about Iran for years. "In their heart of hearts I think the Obama administration knows that this is where this is going," [former Clinton official Kenneth] Pollack says.

I suspect he's right. I also don't expect Obama and his aides to begin talking about a policy shift anytime soon. For the next few months we'll keep hearing about negotiations, sanctions and possibly Israeli military action as ways to stop an Iranian bomb. By far the best chance for a breakthrough, as I see it, lies in a victory by the Iranian opposition over the current regime. If that doesn't happen, it may soon get harder to disguise the hollowness of Western policy.

In Deep Dish

"Politico" on the President's Olympic debacle.

St. John's Sky

7:10 p.m. Saturday

Perfect Songs: "If You Were A Bluebird" (1977)

Joe Ely. Song by his Flatlanders colleague Butch Hancock. A perfect song for many reasons, including the unselfconscious use of the conditional contrary to fact. As RN might have said, there are those who would've written "if you was a bluebird" (and yet note last verse!).

If you were a bluebird you'd be a sad one
I'd give you a true word
But you've already had one
If you were a bluebird,
you'd be crying
You'd be flying home

If you were a raindrop,
You'd shine like a rainbow
And if you were a train stop,
The conductor would sing low
If you were a raindrop,
You'd be falling
You'd be calling home

If you were a hotel
Honey, you'd be a grand one
But, if you hit a slow spell,
Do you think you could stand one
If you were a hotel,
Well I'd lean on your doorbell
I'd call you my home

If I was a highway,
I'd stretch alongside you
I'd help you pass by ways
That had dissatisfied you
If I was a highway,
Well I'd be stretchin'
I'd be fetchin' you home

Charles The Caterpillar

If conservatives are angry (and I'm not willing to stipulate that they're any angrier than liberals these days), I hope they don't see Charles M. Blow's column in today's New York Times, in which he positions them one rung above bug juice on the evolutionary ladder:

A hundred and fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln framed conservatism thusly: “What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?” It was and still is. Conservatism for some is a collective mooring against the waves of change. It is a reflexive reaction to uncertainty.

The Obama administration’s response to the financial and automotive crises and its pursuit of a wide range of reforms is the epitome of new and untried. Major change has come much too quickly for far too many. The response: retreat to a cocoon of conservatism.

His evidence? Among other things,

A May report found that for the first time since Gallup began asking about abortion in 1995, more Americans are now anti-abortion than supportive of abortion rights.

As I'm sure Blow realizes, an anti-abortion activist might well argue that new is not necessarily good. In the old days, W. A. Mozart, C. M. Blow, and J. H. Taylor all stood a mathematically better chance of peeking their caterpillar heads out of their cocoons than they might today. While I'm sure that he didn't mean to patronize those whose views on abortion are ambivalent or in conflict with his own, he did. Is Blow in a cocoon as a result of anesthetizing himself against an appreciation of the lost potentiality inherent in the West's abortion rates? Actually, I don't know his views on the subject, and so I shouldn't speculate. Nor should he so blithely about the views of others. Is he aware, for instance, of polls that show younger people are becoming more accepting of the rights of gay and lesbian people without becoming more accepting of abortion? Blow might call that cocooning. I call it discernment.

As for conservatives' resistance to Obama's big-spending policies, the higher taxes that seem inevitable wouldn't be even remotely new. The highest incremental income tax rate was 91% in the early 1960s. If Blow wants to go higher than that, it would be really old, because it would be called feudalism. What's also old (and tiresome) is know-it-all pundits who psychoanalyze everyone who doesn't embrace their definition of enlightenment.

Even In The Sixties, Verbs Agreed

As reported in "Rolling Stone," an excerpt from President Obama's June 2009 letter to Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, who died last month:

Your passion for music and your ability to stir change has helped define a genre and a generation.

Culture Battles

Should Roman Polanski be extradited? Should gays and lesbians be allowed to marry? Does an abortion destroy a human life? Should this ex-Marine living near a golf course in San Clemente, California be flying the U.S. flag upside down because he thinks his life or property is imperiled by tax increases? These are my favorite kinds of issues -- the ones where people quickly express their points of view (often exposing the deep emotion behind them) while a democratic society takes its sweet time.

If Movie Critics Ruled The World

Village Voice film editor Allison Benedikt:

[I]f you knew Roman Polanski like we know Roman Polanski, you would surely understand how artistically narrow-minded it is to treat him like a rapist just because he raped someone.

Hat tip to 3quarksdaily.com

Forming More Perfect Unions

During the Prop. 8 debate last year, the position of Barack Obama and Carrie Prejean (the former still in his job) was that gay and lesbian couples could enjoy equivalent legal and financial benefits by entering into civil unions. The idea was that the debate was just over the definition of the word marriage. Equivocal though I was about Prop. 8, I felt the civil union argument was a dodge, since studies showed that unions didn't provide couples anywhere near the same protections and benefits. A New York Times article today makes this abundantly clear.

The Immaculate Predicton

This is amazing:



Hat tip to the "Daily Dish"